Nice to hear your thoughts. I hope we can all meet one day too! Maybe a retreat for dentists in the mountains or a beach somewhere?? Wow, that must have been tough being forced into work you did not sign up for. Sometimes something like a layoff can be the best thing for us. To your point… the hard thing about dentistry is we get into it “forever.” Most people have several career changes in their lifetime. That’s normal,, but as a profession, we don’t get that flexibility. Wanting to change things up is so natural. We’re not lazy– we’re just needing something new. It makes sense– we are growing evolving beings, so to stay stuck when we evolve doesn’t really work well. Hope to see more of you in these discussions!

Lotte, keep the dialogue going with us here at Lolabees. You will feel less lonely and hopefully it will inspire you to create the difficult (but so worth it!!) changes you want deep down inside. We see you and are here for you.

Hi Lotte — Sorry for the delayed response. In answer to your question, no I haven’t regretted leaving dentistry one bit! I do miss some of the patients (and staff members I became friends with), but that’s it.

I actually ran into a former patient last week — it was really fun catching up with him (we didn’t recognize each other at first since we were both wearing masks of course!). The connections I made with many patients throughout the years were often enjoyable, inspiring, and just plain fun. But that alone is not enough to make me ever want to go back. And the end of the day, I could see myself being stressed out over the problem patient who I knew was on the schedule for the next morning. Some dentists seem to do ok with that — for me, it ruined the entire day (and night before).

Maybe it would have been different if I absolutely loved what I’d been doing. I find myself dealing with obstacles and disappointments and challenges in what I do now — but it doesn’t affect me in the same way, because I am so much more excited about it.

Of course, everyone’s situation is different. I had practiced dentistry for 35 years, and had been very seriously considering leaving the profession during the last 5 of them. However, the dentist I worked with was not of the same mind-set, and planned to work well into his 70s — mainly because he grew up in a family of health-care providers (physicians, nurses, etc), where it was almost “looked-down” upon to leave the profession before you really had to. So I knew I’d be faced with dealing with a ton of guilt for “abandoning him and the practice”. However, three years ago I needed to have shoulder surgery due to an injury. The recovery period was 6 months — where I physically could not work. I knew I could use this time as an opportunity to really think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. During the recovery (not an easy one, btw!), I made a firm decision that I was going to find a way to leave dentistry, regardless of the consequences, financially and personally. This was MY life I was talking about, no one else’s.

When it comes down to it, we all have to answer to ourselves. Of course, our relationships (spouses, partners, family) play a big part in it as well… but if you are miserable in what you are doing, those relationships will suffer. So, again, you must be true to yourself in order for those relationships to thrive.

I’m far from a career counselor, so maybe it’d be worth checking with someone in that field to help you make your decision. But I will say, if there is something you like doing so much to be willing to not even be paid for it, you may have found a particular path to start out on. From then, other roads grow and branch out to even more opportunities (hopefully with monetary compensation!). I prefer not to just wish you “luck”… because it is often so much more than that. I think it comes down to being open to explore all sorts of new ideas and figuring out which of those have the potential to make you most happy.

Wishing you a fantastic journey!

Aw, Laura. That makes me so happy to hear. My dream is to have this community be a comfortable place where we can be real about our own truths. It is so hard going through this career thinking you are the only one feeling the angst we feel… and SO MANY people are experiencing it. You are not alone by any means.

I’m glad Eric’s comment helped give you more insight. We tend to judge ourselves when we dislike this career. We define ourselves by it and think we are lazy or failures, or we just don’t want to work. That is not true for any of us! We didn’t get here by being lazy people. You don’t get to be a dentist because you’re not a hard worker. You get here because you’ve worked your tail off and you’re not afraid to work hard. I have found, and I think Eric will agree, that once you find the thing that you enjoy doing (even if that’s inside of dentistry,) you won’t mind working. I know a dentist who have practiced for 20 years and finally realized he hated it. He had a successful practice because he is such a great, personable guy. He recently found an associate and decided to only run the business side of it because he liked that part. He then discovered that all these years he never grew his practice up to its potential because that would mean he’d have to do more dentistry! Now he is growing it to its potential and loving it because he has someone else to do the stuff he doesn’t like… but that doesn’t mean he’s working any harder or less hard. You know? Anyway, you are a hard worker and would be willing to put in more effort into something you love more. That’s who you are!

Firstly, Laura, I want to say how grateful I am for your articles. You are truly inspirational and you seem to know exactly how many of us think and feel and have such an eloquent way of expressing it in words. And of course, as a dentist who is struggling, there is no safer, or a more inclusive space, for me to belong. It feels pretty lonely when you hide your true feelings about your career to basically everyone around you.

And to Eric, you wrote something that made me rethink something about myself. You described how you are not afraid of hard work, challenges and obstacles as long as you are enjoying the work. For the longest time, I told myself that the reason I was struggling to cope with dentistry’s challenges was because I was not as motivated or hard working as other dentists. But if I really think about, if I look at the rest of my life outside of dentistry, I do not shy away from hard work or challenges. I feel I can be less hard on myself when I feel overwhelmed with work and stop blaming myself as if there is a character flaw in me and that is why I struggle with my career. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Eric, you are the best cheerleader, and you are so right!! I always struggled with this myself. Isn’t is so easy to see the insanity in this type of thinking… after you’re past it? It is a freedom I wish we could just infuse into all dentists’ brains! We don’t need to take the blame for everything, and in fact, there is a fine line between taking responsibility and taking blame. Anyway, I learned a lot of what you explain here after being a patient myself and often receiving bad news… I noticed what I expected and wanted from my own doctor. It gave me a new perspective on what my own patients would have wanted from me.